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With
cancer, early detection equals a greater likelihood that treatment will have
a positive outcome.
Physicians
have known this for a long time, and the statistics back them up. Survival
rates for those afflicted with many types of cancer have risen dramatically
in the past few decades. And one of the primary reasons is that we are
diagnosing cancer earlier and with much greater accuracy.
Not
only are people more mindful about getting regular checkups, but diagnostic
techniques have improved by leaps and bounds, as well.
In
the not-too-distant past, the only way to get a close-up look at what was
going on inside a patient’s body was via exploratory surgery, which is
not unlike using a sledgehammer to drive a threepenny
nail. There’s considerable collateral damage.
X-rays,
which were discovered at the turn of the last century, added an important new
tool to the diagnostic arsenal, and they remain the most common first option
today. And there things stood until the 1970s, when the whole field suddenly
exploded.
Ultrasound
machines use sound waves to map internal body structures. They’re
simple and cheap, provide immediate results, and don’t involve
radiation. Though they’ve been around since 1950, they weren’t
perfected until 1979, when they added computing technology for image
enhancement.
Computed
tomography (CAT) and positive emission tomography (PET) scans were also
introduced in the ’70s. Both provide detailed maps of internal body
structures, with CAT scans employing X-rays and PET scans gamma rays.
Nowadays, CAT and PET scans are often performed in immediate sequence in the
same session, and the results can be quickly correlated to provide very
detailed views of moving organs, in three dimensions and real time.
The
magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine was first studied on humans in 1977.
An MRI scanner generates a powerful magnetic field that agitates atomic
nuclei into giving off photons, which have frequencies that can be translated
into an image.
Finally,
needle aspiration biopsies -- which came to market in 1981 -- involve the
removal of a small number of cells from a suspected problem area. They are
minimally invasive, generally safe, and often the procedure of choice for
examining potential tumors that lie just under the skin.
All
of these tools are an improvement on cutting each patient open. Although each
has its drawbacks as well as its benefits, they have comprised the
physician’s options for the past thirty years. What has been missing is
a diagnostic that reveals the presence of cancer, no matter where it is or
what stage it’s at. Something, in other words, that will provide the earliest
of early detections. And, oh yes, it should also be non-invasive and
risk-free.
That’s
the golden key, and though it may seem like asking for too much, doctors are
close to having it in their hands.
Last
December, in a paper published in Nature,
researchers at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center revealed the
results of tests with a new cancer blood test. The test uses microchip
technology to sift blood to search for circulating tumor cells (CTCs), which
come from solid tumors and roam through the blood.
CTCs
are hard to find because they're rare, accounting for just one in a billion
among cancer patients' blood cells. Yet the test homes in on them with great
accuracy. Used on 116 cancer patients, including people with lung, breast,
prostate, pancreatic, and colon cancers, the test spotted CTCs in the blood
samples from 99% of them. It detected CTCs even when there were only 5 CTCs
in a milliliter of blood. At the same time, the test returned no false
positives in blood samples from 20 healthy people.
The
test requires only a couple of teaspoons of blood, and doctors initially want
to put it to work providing instant feedback on whether a particular therapy
is or is not working. Most exciting, though, is its potential for early
diagnosis. Although researchers stress that a great deal of work remains to
be done, providing cancer screenings as a routine part of one’s
conventional blood workup seems like an attainable goal.
This
is such a breakthrough that Johnson & Johnson immediately announced it
was throwing its considerable resources behind the effort to bring the test
to market. And four major cancer research centers in the U.S. have signed on
to do follow-up research this year.
A
home cancer test kit? No, that’s not even on the horizon as yet. But
the possibility can now be imagined. And technology has repeatedly
demonstrated that what can be imagined can eventually be created.
Recently, the Casey Technology team
added five
biotech companies with breakthrough cancer treatments to its portfolio
– innovative technologies that could save millions of lives and make
investors handsome returns in the process.
Doug Hornig
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